Ted Sorensen, former mayor of Menlo Park
Ted I. Sorensen, businessman, sports enthusiast, gourmand, and former mayor of Menlo Park, died February 14, after a lengthy illness. He was 76 years old.
Born in Oakland, Mr. Sorensen spent his youth there and in Pt. Arena.
The son of George Sorensen and Helen Halliday, he attended Oakland High School, where he excelled in football and baseball and was active in student government. After attending Napa Valley College, Mr. Sorensen graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of New Mexico.
His plans to play professional football with the San Francisco 49ers were interrupted when he was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.
After his military service, Mr. Sorensen joined his family’s horticultural business in Oakland. In the 1960s he spent time living and working in the Pacific Rim, predominantly in Japan and Hawaii.
Returning to the mainland in the 1970s, he became an executive in the transportation industry, including serving as president of West Coast Leaseway Transportation, a major national trucking company.
A long-time resident of Menlo Park, Mr. Sorensen was elected to the City Council and served from 1984 to 1992, including two years as mayor. During his tenure as a council member, he worked on such important projects as the development of St. Patrick’s Seminary, San Francisquito Creek cleanup, and the establishment of the Belle Haven Senior Center.
He also took part in the mischievous 1987 April Fool’s Day joke that pretended to announce the merging of the cities of Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
He was president of the Peninsula Division of the League of California Cities from 1988 to 1989.
Mr. Sorensen’s love of football led him to serve as athletic manager for the annual Shriner East-West College All-Star Football games at Stanford. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge F&AM of California for 50 years. His interests included gardening, cooking and music, especially the Big Band sound and jazz. He also belonged to several train associations, including the “2472,” which helped to restore a historic locomotive.
Surviving are his wife Ester Bugna, a native of Menlo Park, his sister Charlotte Sharp, of San Leandro, and five nieces and nephews.
No services are planned. Memorials in his name may be made to Shriners Hospitals for Children, 2425 Stockton Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95817.
Colin Whiteside
Colin Whiteside, a resident of Menlo Park and Atherton for 24 years, died at home in Peachtree City, Georgia, on February 8. He was 71.He was the founder of Construction Management Services and built many custom homes in Woodside, Atherton and Menlo Park, family members said.
Mr. Whiteside began his career as a journeyman carpenter in his hometown of Manchester, England, progressing to senior management roles at construction companies in the United Kingdom and South Africa. He started his own company after moving to California in 1978.
For the past two years, he lived in Georgia to be near his daughter Laurie, who survives him. Mr. Whiteside is also survived by Audrey, his wife of 48 years; his sons Michael of Redwood City and Adam of Mountain View; and four grandchildren.
A service celebrating his life is set for 4:30 p.m. on Friday, March 24, at Holbrook-Palmer Park, 150 Watkins Ave., Atherton.
Teresa Whelan Storm
Teresa Whelan Storm, a longtime resident of the Linfield Oaks neighborhood of Menlo Park and a secretary at Stanford University, died in a hospital in Auburn, California, on February 18. She was 86.Ms. Storm loved the Church of the Nativity on Oak Grove Avenue, her Catholic faith and her community in Menlo Park, where she lived for 51 years, friends said. She worked as a secretary for Stanford professors for 18 years. Her husband, James P. Storm, died in 1988.
Ms. Storm is survived by children Colleen Newman of Auburn, Chris Jonas of Auburn, James Storm of Sacramento, John Storm of Denver, and Rosemary Bajonav of Sandy, Oregon; and four grandchildren.
A funeral Mass was held for Ms. Storm on Wednesday, February 22, at the Church of the Nativity, with burial in Holy Cross Cemetery, also in Menlo Park.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Nativity School Building Fund at 1250 Laurel Ave., Menlo Park 94025.
Geraldine Harper Beard
The front desk of the Little House Senior Center in Menlo Park lost a friend and a longtime hostess with the January 25 death of Geraldine Harper Beard, a Menlo Park resident since 1990. Ms. Beard was 91.Geraldine Lenore Harper grew up in Modoc County in the northeast corner of the state, at first on a cattle ranch and then with her grandparents in the town of Adin after her parents died.
She studied at San Jose State University and lived for a time in the Girls’ Friendly Society Lodge in San Francisco, the city where she met and married John Winter Beard, a Stanford University graduate.
During the 1950s, the Beards lived in Marin County and founded the Buzzin’ Boots square dancing club in Larkspur, friends said. When the earthquake hit in October 1989, Ms. Beard was living in the vulnerable Marina district in San Francisco.
Ms. Beard is survived her daughter Jane Beard Ames; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her ashes will be interred in Adin this summer.
Services were handled by the Menlo Colonial Chapel.
Jack Savage Wildman
A memorial service will be held Friday, March 3, for Jack Wildman, a longtime Menlo Park resident who died February 20 at age 79.The services will start at 10 a.m. at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, 950 Santa Cruz Ave.
He attended Sequoia High School in Redwood City and joined the military to serve in World War II. He also served in Korea.
Returning to civilian life, he graduated from San Jose State University with a bachelor’s degree in commercial art.
While working at the Menlo Park Recorder newspaper, he met Barbara Albertson and they married in 1953 at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church.
Mr. Wildman later became a deacon at the church and worked with the church’s prison ministry program for many years.
He worked in advertising as administrative manager at McCann-Erickson’s San Francisco office, and then as senior account manager at Wank Williams & Neylan in Menlo Park.
He later worked in advertising and as public affairs manager at the Palo Alto Times and the Peninsula Times Tribune, where he retired in 1990.
Mr. Wildman enjoyed sketching and painting historic sites and writing essays and stories, family members said. His interest in military history led to an extensive library that he recently donated to San Jose State’s Burdick Military History Project.
He raised two sons in Menlo Park with his wife Barbara, who died of cancer in 2002.
Mr. Wildman is survived by his sons, Matthew Savage Wildman of Redwood City and Douglas Albertson Wildman of San Francisco; and three granddaughters.
The family prefers donations to the American Parkinson Disease Association.
Wesley Tharalsen
Wesley Tharalsen, who lived in San Bruno and was active in the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, died at home at the age of 90 on January 27.Friends described Mr. Tharalsen as lively, cheerful and “incurably mischievous.”
He is survived by his living companion Donna Berthaud, son Robert, and two grandchildren.
Memorial services were held February 24 at the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church after interment at Alta Mesa Cemetery in Palo Alto.
Michelle Marie Albrecht
Michelle Marie Albrecht, a resident of Menlo Park and Atherton for many years, died February 6 of cirrhosis of the liver in Baja California, Mexico. She was 45.Ms. Albrecht was born in Redwood City and raised in Menlo Park. She attended St. Raymond School in Menlo Park and graduated from Woodside High School in 1978. She loved gardening, cooking and taking care of her dogs, family members said.
She is survived by her mother, Frances Albrecht of Soquel; and her sisters Nancy of Discovery Bay, Mary of Stanwood, Washington, and Patty of San Francisco. Her father Douglas Albrecht preceded her in death.
No services were held. In lieu of flowers, the family prefers memorial donations be made to St. Raymond School, 1211 Arbor Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025; or to Gemma, a transitional program for incarcerated women re-entering the community, P.O. Box 443, Santa Cruz, CA 95061.
Sister Margaret Mary Shannon
Sister Margaret Mary Shannon, longtime teacher of home economics and art at Duchesne Academy and College in Omaha, Nebraska, died Sunday, February 19, at Oakwood Convent of the Sacred Heart, a retirement center for members of her religious order in Atherton. She was 91.Sister Shannon, a native of St. Joseph, Missouri, earned a bachelor’s degree at Duchesne College in 1939 and professed her vows in the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1942. She earned a master’s degree in home economics at the University of Nebraska in 1956 and a doctoral degree in adult education and English at the university in 1974.
Following five years of teaching at a Sacred Heart school in the Chicago area, she returned to Omaha in 1941 to teach at her alma mater.
Sister Shannon taught English, math, art and sewing at Duchesne from 1941 to 1957. She returned in 1959, following a second brief teaching assignment in Chicago, and remained at Duchesne until 1970.
She is remembered as a teacher who was “warm and witty, very bright and artistically talented,” said Mary Jo Martin of Omaha, a former colleague.
Sister Shannon left Duchesne in 1970 to study for her doctorate. From 1974 to 1981, she served as coordinator of an adult education center at a church in New Orleans and worked at the Art Institute of Chicago in a special gallery for the visually impaired.
In 1982, she moved to Washington, D.C., where for six years she worked as a volunteer docent and did research at Smithsonian Institution museums.
She moved to the retirement center in Atherton in 1991.
She is survived by a brother, Marion Shannon, and his wife, Mabel, of Sacramento.
A funeral Mass was celebrated at Oakwood on February 23, followed by burial in the convent cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to the Society of the Sacred Heart Retirement Fund, 4389 West Pine Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108.
Arrangements were by Roller Hapgood Tinney Funeral Home in Palo Alto.
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